Harrison King McCann (November 4, 1880 – December 20, 1962), was the founder of the H. K. McCann Company. H. K. McCann Company was an advertising agency that, as

McCann Erickson McCann, formerly McCann Erickson, is an American global advertising agency network, with offices in over 120 countries. McCann is part of McCann Worldgroup, along with several other agencies, including direct digital marketing agency MRM//McC ...

, grew to become the world's largest with a global network of offices in more than 130 countries, providing advertising campaigns for brands including

Standard Oil Standard Oil Company was a Trust (business), corporate trust in the petroleum industry that existed from 1882 to 1911. The origins of the trust lay in the operations of the Standard Oil of Ohio, Standard Oil Company (Ohio), which had been founde ...

(Esso, Exxon),

Vaseline Vaseline ()Also pronounced with the main stress on the last syllable . is an American brand of petroleum jelly-based products owned by British multinational company Unilever. Products include plain petroleum jelly and a selection of skin creams, ...

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, Del Monte,

Nabisco Nabisco (, abbreviated from the earlier name National Biscuit Company) is an American manufacturer of cookies and snacks headquartered in East Hanover, New Jersey. The company is a subsidiary of Illinois-based Mondelēz International. Nabisco' ...

Coca-Cola Coca-Cola, or Coke, is a cola soft drink manufactured by the Coca-Cola Company. In 2013, Coke products were sold in over 200 countries and territories worldwide, with consumers drinking more than 1.8 billion company beverage servings ...

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, L’Oréal,

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, and MasterCard.

Biography

McCann was born in Maine on November 4, 1880, to a New England family that had settled in New Hampshire in the seventeenth century. In 1902 he graduated from

Bowdoin College Bowdoin College ( ) is a Private college, private liberal arts colleges in the United States, liberal arts college in Brunswick, Maine. It was chartered in 1794. The main Bowdoin campus is located near Casco Bay and the Androscoggin River. In a ...

Brunswick, Maine Brunswick is a New England town, town in Cumberland County, Maine, United States. Brunswick is included in the Lewiston-Auburn, Maine metropolitan New England city and town area. The population was 21,756 at the 2020 United States Census. Part o ...

, where he had worked on the student newspaper and been leader of the mandolin club. During his high school and college years he worked for Hiram Ricker & Sons, hotel proprietors in Poland Spring, initially as a bellboy and later as salesman for

Poland Spring Poland Spring is a brand of bottled water produced in Poland, Maine. It is named after the natural spring in the town of Poland, Maine that it was originally drawn from. It was a subsidiary of the private equity firm, BlueTriton Brands, formerly ...

water. This job took him to the Poland Springs New York office. Once in New York, McCann switched jobs, joining the Amsterdam Advertising Agency as copywriter in 1903. In the same year he was offered a position by the

New York Telephone Company Verizon New York, Inc., formerly The New York Telephone Company (NYTel), was organized in 1896, taking over the New York City operations of the Bell Telephone Company, American Bell Telephone Company. Predecessor companies The Telephone Company ...

, and put in charge of an experimental campaign to discover if advertising could prevent the company from losing customers to smaller competitors. By 1910, McCann was successfully running an in-house department of 100 staff. McCann's work for the New York Telephone Company attracted the attention of the Standard Oil Company, who recruited him to lead their in-house advertising department. When the US Government ordered the break-up of the Standard Oil Company on monopoly grounds, McCann formed his own agency with Canadian efficiency expert Herbert Newton Casson to provide ad continuity. The H. K. McCann Company opened its doors on Broadway, New York in 1912, with Standard Oil as its first account. By its second year it was handling over $200,000 worth of business. A network of offices across North America quickly followed. In 1928, McCann opened its first European offices in Berlin, London and Paris. In 1930, McCann merged with Alfred Erickson's agency to form McCann-Erickson. Harrison McCann died on December 20, 1962, in a car crash in

Old Westbury, New York Old Westbury is a village in the towns of North Hempstead and Oyster Bay in Nassau County, on the North Shore of Long Island, in New York, United States. The population was 4,671 at the 2010 census. The Incorporated Village of Old Westbury ...

Legacy

As a distinguished

alumnus, Harrison King McCann is the namesake of a named professorial chair in the college's English department. Bowdoin professors endowed with this honor in more recent years include: * Marilyn Reizbaum, Ph.D., Harrison King McCann Professor of English * Franklin G. Burroughs, Ph.D., Harrison King McCann Research Professor of the English Language Emeritus and author of nonfiction books and essays * Barbara Jeanne Kaster, Ph.D., Harrison King McCann Professor of Communication in the Department of English Emerita

Sources

# Herbert Newton Casson "The Story of My Life" 1931 Efficiency Magazine, London page 164-5

References

External links

Advertising Hall of Fame
{{DEFAULTSORT:McCann, Harry American advertising executives 1880 births 1962 deaths Businesspeople from Maine Bowdoin College alumni 20th-century American businesspeople